I Don't Do Too Well On My Own

Mike didn’t notice for a long, long time.

Billie was always the quiet kid, even more so when his dad died - it was like he died and grabbed Billie’s voice box and took it six feet under with him. Mike knew Andy Armstrong a little bit before he went, he was a nice guy with a deep voice and Billie always talked about him like he was Jesus Lord Almighty, and Mike supposed he could understand that, even though he didn’t really like adults all that much.

So when Andy died and Billie went quiet, Mike still talked to him at school and after school and even went to the funeral and talked to him, and even though sometimes Billie didn’t talk back, Mike knew he was listening. And in December, three months after the funeral, Mike made some offhand joke about some kid at school and Billie had smiled, he had fucking smiled, and he even giggled a little, and it made Mike’s heart soar and for the first time since that rainy September he thought maybe Billie would be okay.

Once they crossed the threshold into teenage years and Mike had his growth spurt and Billie stayed pathetically short, their differences became more apparent than ever. Billie’s mother watched from the sidelines, waiting for the day the tall and handsome Mike kicked her dark little son to the curb, but it just never happened. Mike was there after school faithfully, always with polite words to say and a smile for Billie, and they went up to his room and did whatever they did, and Ollie always watched them climb the stairs, one tall and fair and the other small and dark, and wished Andy was around to see what good a friend Billie had.

Ollie wished Andy could be around to see a lot of things.

---

Mike came over everyday after school and spent almost all of his weekends at Billie’s house. Ollie didn’t mind - the only time she ever saw her son smile was when Mike was around. She began to make jokes about Mike’s constant presence, giving him their last name - “Oh, hello, Mike Armstrong!” - or calling him son or nagging him to do his homework. You know. Motherly things. Billie had told her solemnly a few years ago that Mike’s foster mom drank a lot and they didn’t really get along, and that was all Ollie needed to know. He was a part of the Armstrong family, now and forever. He was privy to most of the family secrets - he knew that Marcy had been molested and that Ollie’s father was a drunk and millions of other things, just things that a family knows about each other.

So neither Billie or Mike ever really got the chance to figure out Billie’s problem - or even that he had a problem - until Mike’s mom remarried to a man who didn’t understand why Mike was never home, a man Mike called ‘a hardass’, but not in a bad way.

“He wants me to spend more time at home,” Mike told Billie.

“You mean like… all the time?” Billie asked.

“I don’t know. Mom… Mom hasn’t been drinking as much as she usually does now that Ted’s here…” Mike said, and it seemed like he didn’t quite believe what he was saying.

Billie didn’t know what to say, so Mike just smiled and left.

---

That night, Billie had a panic attack.
He woke up around 3 am, his hands fisting the sheets, sweat leaking from his pores.

“Mike?” he whispered, his voice small and strained. “Mike, something’s happening to me. Mike?”

There was no answer. Billie turned his head ever so slightly, and the sight of an empty bed next to him sent his heart into another manic spasm of beats. He had forgotten - Mike wasn’t there. Mike was at… his house. Not at home. Not with Billie Joe. Not where he should be.

When was the last time he had spent a night alone? He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t remember anything. His heart was beating too fast for him to remember anything. Billie’s paralysis broke and he threw the covers off himself, sitting up in bed, leaving a large wet patch of sweat behind him. Each time he breathed, his chest felt tighter and drier, like each breath took away his oxygen and all the fluids and juices in his body. His fingers gripped the sheets, his muscles tensing in his shoulders.
Billie was, for lack of a better word, petrified.

Mike, his mind said. You need Mike. Billie closed his eyes against the threatening tears and attempted (unsuccessfully) to swallow.

Mike, he told himself again. Call Mike. But he couldn’t, it was too late.

---

Billie wasn’t at school the next day, and Mike was worried for no particular reason. He attributed his deep seated discomfort to the fact that Billie was his best friend and he just didn’t like not being with him, but later, he supposed he knew that his intuition was telling him something he didn’t want to hear.

So when school ended on that day, Mike headed straight for Billie’s house, taking every shortcut he knew of and walking quickly, his feet slapping against the pavement. As he got onto Billie’s block and the blue house came into view, he broke out into a trot, the discomfort of the day weighing down in a bad way on his shoulders, knowing that he had to see Billie and he had to see him now.

He burst through the front door, pausing only to fit his key through the lock. He saw the back of Billie’s head bent over on the couch, and the back of his mother’s head bent with his.

“B-Billie?” Mike said tentatively, and the two heads jumped and turned. The first thing Mike saw were the tear tracks down Billie’s face, and the second thing he saw was the expression on Ollie’s face - one he had not seen before. Her mouth was turned down at the corners, her eyes were wide and streaked with red, and every part of her face worked together to portray one emotion - fright.

“Mike,” Billie said, standing up and walking slowly around the couch, like a boy in a dream. He held his arms out wordlessly and Mike simply took him in, unable to find the words he wanted to say. He knew something was very, very wrong, but he was completely clueless as to what it was. And when Billie wrapped his arms around Mike’s neck and Mike tightened his grip around Billie’s torso, squeezing, he did something he had never done before - he kissed the top of Billie’s head, through his mop of curly brown hair.
And with that, with that tiny bit of pressure on his skull, Billie began to cry into Mike’s shoulder - loud, wracking sobs that seemed to come from a place deep deep within him, some very dark, very secret place.

“Ollie,” Mike said over Billie’s head. “Ollie, what’s going on?”

She spoke to him as if he was an adult, an equal, and Mike listened seriously, rubbing small circles in the small of Billie’s back without really realizing it.

“He woke up in the middle of the night and… and he couldn’t breathe, I guess. He was sweating and shaking and he came into my room and he… well, he just said he was scared, I mean, that’s all he could really say. He was in a really bad place, and I haven’t left him alone since then. Mike, I don’t know what this is and I don’t know what to do,” Ollie finished, standing up from her seat on the couch and crossing the room to the boys.

She put on hand tenderly on Mike’s forehead, like she was feeling for a fever, and whispered, “Find out what’s wrong, my Mike.”

Mike smiled and nodded, and she went upstairs, pausing at the landing at the top to look back. She saw two boys - one light, one dark, one tall, one short. She saw the love between them, and for that moment, to Ollie Armstrong, the two embracing boys seemed to be bathed in a kind of glow, an ethereal old light that made a few words occur to her: love, future, and possibility. And then she blinked and it was gone, but that was okay. She knew it had been there.

Ollie Armstrong smiled and turned away.

---

Mike guided Billie to the couch when he heard Ollie’s footsteps fade away. Mike used his body to push him, Billie did an awkward kind of back step towards the couch, his sobs quieter now but still making his whole body spasm. When they got the couch, Mike laid Billie down and curled up next to him - another first. They had shared a bed before but never a space this small. Mike realized that he fit perfectly into the valleys and mounds of Billie’s body, like he was meant to be there.

“Talk to me, please?” Mike asked, nose to nose with his best friend.

Billie took a deep breath and used his free hand to wipe away a few stray tears. “I don’t know what’s going on, Mike. I just…”

“You just what?”

“I woke up last night and you weren’t there and I got scared,” Billie had to force the words out, because they sounded childish in his head, worse on his tongue, and the silence after he spoke them was the worst of all.

“Did you… was it a nightmare?” Mike asked, but it sounded like he was suggesting almost hopefully - maybe this wasn’t that serious.

“No. I wasn’t dreaming - at least, I don’t think. I haven’t really dreamt since… well, you know,” Billie said quietly, purposely looking anywhere but directly at Mike.

“I know,” Mike said, smoothing Billie’s hair back - again, without really thinking about it.

There was silence for a minute. Then Billie spoke, and it his voice was so small that Mike thought he could feel his heart break.

“Please don’t leave me,” he said, and somehow it was worse that he wasn’t crying. Mike realized that it was because Billie was using the same voice he had used when he spoke to his father in his coffin, all those years ago.

Mike hardly missed a beat. “Never,” he said, and he knew in his heart that he meant it.

---

Billie was diagnosed with a panic disorder a few days later, even though Mike had slept over every night and he hadn’t had one attack, and before the day ended, he was home with a shiny orange plastic bottle clutched in his hand. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it, but his mom thought it was a good idea, and that was enough for him.

Mike held it in his hands for a long time, staring at the label and shaking a few of the pills out, examining them in his hands. They were blue and white capsules.

“Take one twice daily,” he read out loud. Billie looked over at him from where he was sitting on the floor, aimlessly strumming a guitar.

“Yeah,” he said in response, and Mike finally set the bottle down on the windowsill next to the bed.

“Come here,” he said, and Billie immediately stood and went to him, sitting so close their thighs were touching.

“I’m gonna be here for you, forever,” Mike started, and Billie immediately felt pinpricks of tears behind his eyelids. “And no matter what these pills do to you - if they make you sleepy, if they make you numb, if they make you irritable, if they make you feel anything at all, just know that they can’t take yourself away from you. They can’t take you away from me. And who knows, Billie, maybe they’ll even help. But you have to promise me to take them, and you have to promise me to follow your instincts. If they feel… bad, then say something. Ollie will listen. I will listen. We only want this… this anxiety, or whatever it is, to go away.”

By the time that Mike had finished with his words that were beyond his years, Billie was crying. He couldn’t help it. He had never felt so many conflicting emotions at once - love, sadness, dread, hope. He had never felt so loved. He felt a warm hand in his, and he looked through his tears to Mike’s concerned face, to the face of his best friend, and he said the first words that came to his mind.

“I love you, Mike.”

And Mike did that odd thing again - he leaned over and kissed Billie, this time on the forehead. He didn’t say anything simply because he didn’t have to. That kiss had said it all.

Mike laid Billie back on the bed and snuggled up next to him, the curtainless window shining the sun through, reflecting the orange of the pill bottle onto their faces. They both sensed that they were on the edge of some great precipice, the beginning of something, but neither of them were as scared as they probably should have been - because they had each other, and the same way Mike just knew that something was wrong with Billie, they knew that it was gonna be okay.